Kellner, a court official in the small town of Laubach, had no special access to inside information. Yet he was repulsed by the Nazi regime and began keeping a detailed diary, recording what he read in the German press and what he heard from those around him. He hoped his writings would serve as a warning to future generations against blind faith and dictatorship.
Ullrich explains that Kellner’s diaries “show that it was entirely possible for normal people in small-town Germany to see through the lies of Nazi propaganda and learn of things like the ‘euthanasia’ murders of patients in psychiatric institutions and the mass executions carried out in occupied parts of eastern Europe.”